Joe Lieberman

But what happens? I presume that some extra attention is paid to those people.

It truly helps us draw attention to this gap, and hopefully it will encourage our colleagues to vote to close the gap.

The Second Amendment constitutional right, just like the First, our most prized right--free speech, assembly, petitioning your government, freedom of religion--they are not unlimited.

I wanted to ask you to just talk a little bit about it and how it has worked and whether you think the Federal Government ought to try to encourage other communities to adopt the same kind of program.

This is an extraordinarily limited law that is being proposed by Congressman King and others to say that somebody who is a suspected terrorist cannot buy a gun.

We simply cannot stop, no matter how hard we try, every attempt, and that is where the citizenry becomes 300 million plus more security providers for our country.

Of course, it is true that even if the terror gap in our background check system were to be fixed, terror suspects and other dangerous people would still be able to go to gun shows to buy guns without any background check at all.

I think you set a standard of leadership and competence.

It just seems to me that knowing that any action here can ultimately be brought to court by a defendant, that you would want to know whether that person has gone in to buy a gun.

Global Islamist extremism terrorists have declared war on America, and they are attacking our homeland with increasing frequency.

I presume that if somebody who had risen to a high enough level of concern to be on the No Fly List comes in to buy a gun, the FBI is going to pay special attention to that.

Very impressive and reassuring.

I just do not see an argument that is based on the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns.

The bill you have introduced, I want to say for the record, has been referred to the committee of legislative jurisdiction.

If anybody is on a terrorism watchlist because somebody suspects that they may be a terrorist, it is in the interest of everybody else on that plane and of society to at least stop them and give them a secondary screening.

Our message was that we cannot wait for another Fort Hood to happen before we take action.

I encourage the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass this important bill.

I must say I am troubled by your concerns about this proposal because I think it is very limited.

Senator Lautenberg, you have been a real leader on this.

An alert citizenry is one of the best defenses against terrorist attacks.

Attorney General Eric Holder supported closing the terror gap in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, and so does the vast majority of Americans.

We are holding this hearing today in the dispatch of our responsibility to inquire as to the impact passage of your legislation could have on our homeland security.

Oddly, strangely, in this case, though the Department of Justice may be informed that your name is on a terrorism watch list, they can't stop you from buying a gun. That's what we're trying to -- a gap we're trying to fill here with this…

If you don't have that support, the program will be undermined.

If those two conditions are met, it is real simple. Do it.